SUNDAY WEBCOMIC

As I have pointed out in the past there are many solutions to the problem of wanting to do a webcomic while lacking the basic skills necessary to create comics.  The most elegant solution is to use only one picture, and only change the words.  That is what Zarj's Webcomics does.  Not only that, it tells you it is webcomics in the title, plus the extra added bonus of saying right in the banner across the top of the page that they are lame webcomics.  As everyone knows, saying a joke isn't funny makes it funny.

I often find comics which seem to have a lot of potential, but are in early stages of development with only a few strips to read.  Like Oldjokes and Caveman Rock Comic. I don't want to jinx them by bringing undue attention their way, but I hope they keep producing the same quality of work.

Just so you don't feel like I left you hanging with those, here is a classic example of SUNDAY WEBCOMIC inscrutability, Fun With Homeshopping.  Enjoy

On the Nature of Things

The Physical realm and the Spiritual realm are separate and distinct, though each affects the other.  The scholarship of the Physical realm is Science; its nature is Order and its laws are stable and consistent. The scholarship of the Spiritual realm is Mysticism; its nature is Chaos and its laws are dependent and mutable.  Where the two realms overlap is the realm of Charlatanry, where resemblances are reality and opinions are facts.  The scholarship of the Charlatanous realm is called Research; its nature is Contrivance and its laws are contradictory.  The aims of the Scientist and the Mystic are to discover, learn and share.  The aims of the Charlatan are to invent, prove and convince.  The Charlatan poses as Scientist or Mystic, whichever convenience requires, but is neither.  The Mystic who denies the reality of the Physical realm, and the Scientist who denies the reality of the Spiritual realm, are not Charlatans, but fools.

Movies

The Walls of Jericho (1948) Anne Baxter, Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas and Cornel Wilde star in this melodrama of passion and politics in early 20th century small-town Kansas. It is pretty early in Douglas' career and he doesn't have much to do here but be led around by Darnell, his flashy scheming wife.  Wilde is inoffensive and it is not easy to see why he inspires such feelings among the ladies here but somebody had to do it.  The good thing about this is that three quarters of the way through, Baxter takes the movie and scampers off with it, and never gives it back.  Nothing in a movie makes my heart sink like the realization that it is turning into a prolonged trial scene, but Baxter really saved this one for me when a shocking turn of events makes her lead attorney and deliverer of the impassioned closing speech.  Unlike lesser stars she always looks great with her hair up and in restrained period costume, and she always did her best with what she was given, no matter what the role. One of my favorite scenes in cinema is her heartrendingly ironic closing speech in the wartime pro-soviet epic The North Star, a passionate evocation of a dream never to be fulfilled. Overall this is a darned good big budget costume melodrama and if that is what you are craving this really delivers, and I must say the costumes are great - some really swell dresses here, especially Darnell's elaborate display. Ann Dvorak plays a pivotal role as Wilde's bitter drunken wife, as does Barton MacLane as his usual surly menacing lout. I could have done with a few fewer renditions of Shine On Harvest Moon but I can't fault it on much else.  9/10

Anne Baxter - on her it looks good.

Movies

Naked Alibi (1954) is a weirdly unconvincing noir starring Sterling Hayden, Gloria Grahame and Gene Barry. Barry overacts horrifically as a volatile bakery owner, Hayden is the disgraced ex-police chief trying to prove Barry is a cop-killer, and Grahame is the woman in between.  Hayden and Grahame are good actors, and both kind of unusual looking, so they go together well, but this takes place in the world where there are towns called things like Border City, with streets that all curve so you can only see two blocks and not into the Medieval Paris or New York part of the backlot a few hundred yards away. The strange unbelievability of the production is distilled in Grahame's execution of the following peculiarly trashy dubbed musical number in an overlit soundstage Border City cantina with music but no band. Still there is something irresistibly seductive to me about her unusually tiny mouth - I find it hard to look at anything else when she is onscreen. 6/10 overall, but for weirdness it is more of an 8.

The Time of His Life (1955) Offbeat independent British comedy in which a snobbish matron must endure the reappearance of her convict father, whose only desire is to go back to jail where he belongs.  It relies mostly on prolonged slapstick and pratfalls for its "laughs" and could have been more amusing if it had simply gone with the appeal of the characters and circumstances. The only face I recognized was bespectacled Richard Wattis. Kind of a chore to sit through, but the organ and vibes soundtrack added a sort of Mr. Hulot emotional appeal and there is a song. 4/10

SUNDAY WEBCOMIC

Way back in the middle of the 20th century was when I first learned to cherish the experience of the Sunday Comics.  Lying on the floor with a vast expanse of  colors and words spread before me I puzzled my way through such enigmas as Ferd'nand, The Little King and Henry.  I would come to the breakfast table with my elbows blackened by printer's ink and my brain dulled by the inexplicable antics of those strange silent characters.  I cannot come to your home and daub your elbows with grime once a week but I can do it to your brain.

What makes a really good choice for a SUNDAY WEBCOMIC for me is not just the quality of the work itself, but the quality of the apologies and explanations the artists attach to them.  The creator of this SUNDAY WEBCOMIC called Think About It keeps his explanations and apologies short, like what the comics theirselves are.

Another sterling quality that makes a great SUNDAY WEBCOMIC is choice of subject matter.  NaggyNerd seems to be entirely about video game characters.  I have heard of some of them, but I have never seen any of them being played and certainly have never played them myself, so it's kind of interesting to me to see.  I like to think of someone out there thinking this stuff is hilarious because they know what it is about.

As a special added bonus I am adding this special bonus in addition to the preceding two strips, specially, as a bonus.  Ferd'nand is still being created far off in lonely Denmark or somewhere and one may not only enjoy the comic itself, but the special added bonus of seeing people try to figure it out or explain it to each other, just like when I used to ask my Mom and she would as often as not be as puzzled as I was.

Go wash your elbows and come to the table.

I EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the folks out there who work so hard to make themselves look ridiculous in elaborate ways requiring continuous effort, expense, maintenance and pain. Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, "What a hideous old coot, getting more wretched and repulsive every day."  Then I remember all the people with their rainbow heads and ratty dreads, implanted skull knobs and lumpy lip jobs, hunks of metal hanging off their faces and even uglier places, and I realize I could get dragged through a mudhole by a garbage truck and still look like I got gussied up to shake hands with the Queen compared to those dopey looking scribbled up goofbags.  Thank you, you dumb jerks, for reminding me that I am not just smarter than you, but better looking too.

Movies

Gangway for Tomorrow (1943)  Extremely entertaining feelgood wartime propaganda piece - a carful of ridesharing war workers on the way to a day's work at the airplane plant recall in turn the past events that led them to where they are.  Not a big or flashy movie, but a set of interesting human stories.  Written by radio suspense-master Arch Oboler, very well produced and directed.  Good clean fun.  8/10

Attack the Block (2011) A gang of teenage hoodlums are interrupted in mid-crime by an alien invasion.  The problem is, they are the ones who have what the monsters want.  A pure, sharp, clean, witty and intense monster movie without a lot of fancy-ass jerkycam CGI spectacle.  A good monster movie is about people, and this story is populated by believable and eventually likeable characters, fighting guys in monster suits.  That's right, monster suits.  Not some motion capture glittery tentacled slime-dripping whooshing ray-emitting crap, but guys in big black fur suits and it totally works. Just enough woah moments and sudden grim laughs; not too grisly but the right amount to show you those gorilla-wolf motherfuckers mean business.  This is the best pure monster movie I can recall seeing in years and I don't give 10/10 easily or often but this earns it. Nice job, everybody.

This is all you need to know.

Movies

Bunraku (2010) I didn't realize when I "obtained" this that it hadn't been released to US theaters yet.  I have some standards about downloading and tend not to go for certain things as a matter of principle.  I had a vague idea this was not going to get a US theatrical release and thought this was the only way I could see it. Sorry.  Watched it anyway.  This extremely imaginative, lively and colorful fantasy never sets foot in reality for a moment, which is something I really appreciate in a movie.  You're going to have to build sets for everything anyway so why not make them the craziest sets you can, and light the hell out of them and stick greenscreens behind them to fill the background with pure art instead of just a picture of something you can see by looking out the window.  That said, it is all pretty much fight scenes tied together with a string of genre cliches.  I need more from a story than that.  It was fun to see but I would have liked it more if there had been an actual plot or some kind of relational contrivance beyond these guys have to fight those guys. Or some songs would have been cool, to go with the imaginative choreography that was already there. So, 6/10 for me.  If you like that fighty stuff go see it if you can.

Movies

Law of the Jungle (1942) is a Monogram soundstage cheapie hacked together in a few days and is crude and flat even for that.  Arline Judge was not a great actress but a good worker when she had something to work with, and a more watchable example of that is Sensation Hunters (1933).  I thought she seemed a bit unfeminine and was surprised to learn she held a Hollywood record for eight marriages long before it was fashionable.  In this thing everyone stands around waiting for a cue and chokes out their lines like they just saw the script for the first time a minute ago.  The leading man could be replaced by a hat rack and even Mantan is reduced to doing pratfalls.  If Mantan can't save a movie, nobody can.  The one item of interest is the appearance of Arthur O'Connell as a greasy traitor with a phony British accent, long before he became known for his kindly grey moustache. 3/10

Movies

Smarty (1934)  Joan Blondell is cast out of type as a manipulative upper-class featherbrain who goads husband Warren William to violence in this rather unsettling divorce farce. The message of the film is stated in so many words, by a woman, that some women need to be socked in the jaw to bring them into line and the unfortunate thing is that he didn't do it sooner and more often.  This whole movie is looking to be slapped down for its advocation of violence and adultery.  Blondell is as toothsome as always, especially in a black backless gown which her exasperated ex yanks off of her in one swift motion, but the role is outside of her range.  There are any number of actresses who could have done this irritating nitwit role to perfection, but Joan is the wrong choice for it.  On the plus side there is a fashion show at a high end couturier where the styles are pushed just beyond the brink of absurdity, and plenty of leg, back and negligee throughout.  Edward Everett Horton and Frank McHugh lend a hand but in the end this was just wrong.  Especially the end.  4/10

Watch Out, We're Mad (1974) Bud Spencer and Terence Hill just want their dune buggy replaced by the gangsters who crashed and burned it, or they will get mad.  They eventually do get mad. Watch out. Utterly moronic with no pretensions of being anything else.  Starts right off with a kind of motocross race for cars with lots and lots of jumping, rolling, crashing vehicles.  Mindless violence and ludicrous brawls, and Donald Pleasence behaving absolutely idiotically.  It was exactly what I needed to see at the time and I tittered giddily.  6/10

Hey mister, your car's on fire.

SUNDAY WEBCOMIC

Nowadays when people want to do an online webcomic and they know they don't have any of the requisite skills, there is a simple answer.  The simplest answer is spare us all and devote your talents to something you can actually do well, but that is not the one I mean.  What I mean is take a picture with your telephone, open it in photoshop, then go to FILTERS > ARTISTIC > POSTER EDGES. Instant online webcomic!

Like Chamber of the Arcanum, which has the added bonus of a protagonist who critiques the online webcomic itself as it is happening.

And like Searching to Be, which has the added bonus of a cartoonist who critiques the online webcomic itself and explains what went wrong and why.

Happy September 11th!

Books - The Overton Window "by" Glenn Beck

The Overton Window - Glenn Beck  I had seen this at the library a few weeks ago and had been thinking of it ever since.  Kook novels are a field of special interest for me because they contain ideas which I am unlikely to encounter anywhere else, usually packed in an especially mediocre form of utopian/dystopian fantasy.  I was in the mood for something easy to digest and I knew this couldn't have been written by Beck himself (if it had, it probably would have been 600 pages), so it would be a standard ghost-written page-turner which hit all the notes at the right time.  When a kook novel is written by the kook him/herself it can be challenging, if not impossible, to read and I regret that among the many on the shelves here at the Kooks Museum I have only read most of them.  Any book I can rip through in four hours is a well-crafted piece of formula fiction, and that's what this is.  Steeped in kook lore as I am, I got all the Global Political Conspiracy references and was pleased to be introduced to some pretty interesting social engineering concepts, including the eponymous Window - ideas acceptable to the public are within this so-called window, and to change what is accepted one introduces extreme and unacceptable ideas, which automatically widens the window making less extreme ideas palatable.  This is similar to less well-defined ideas of my own, that the existence of an obviously insane extremism makes it easier to introduce unusual or uncommon ideas which seem more reasonable by comparison.  This is a classic and very useful fallacy of argument which actually operates subliminally to alter people's ideas without their knowing it. The irony of Beck's use of the Overton Widow concept, to me, is that he doesn't appear to realize that he has been used for exactly that purpose - as a public loony introducing crank extremist theories in order to make a less radical deliberate thought control agenda more palatable.  After finishing The Overton Window I opened another book I got at the same time, the first volume of  Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  I knew by the time I got to the second paragraph that I held in my hands a work of genius.  The sad thing is, I am not sure I will be able to read it.

Movies - recent viewing

Narok (2005) is a Thai hell movie.  A group of people are erroneously sent to hell even though they are all still alive in the emergency room.  Buddhist hell, where they saw people in half, hang them from hooks and smash their hands and feet with mallets forever.  Not much of a story is necessary in a Hell movie - you are there and you want to get out, some do and some don't. It was great to see a Buddhist slant on it.  I don't think there are nearly enough hell movies.  This one is okay as a horror ordeal story, 6/10.  I recommend more highly the Nobuo Nakagawa film Jigoku (1960) which makes maximum use of its limited resources.

The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly (1957) goes by other names but it is a Japanese movie about a good guy with an invisibility ray against a bad guy with shrinking gas which makes him so small he just drifts around and floats into locked rooms to murder people.  It is a movie about people you can't see.  The next day I couldn't remember what I had watched the night before.  3/10

The Nitwits (1935) is the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy said to have been remade as Genius At Work, previously reviewed.  Two goofy guys get involved with a mysterious serial murderer and there the resemblance ends.  The difference between the two movies is W&W have distinct personalities and chemistry as a team, they do and say amusing things in amusing ways, and there are jokes and humor included in the script, as well as a couple of good musical numbers.  As good a Wheeler and Woolsey movie as was ever made - harmless fun and gentle entertainment.  7/10

The Ghost Writer (2010) directed by Roman Polanski, is in many ways similar to his earlier The Ninth Gate, entering an obscure byway of literature by way of a protagonist just intelligent enough to work his way into a baffling maze but not to get back out again in one piece.  Similar too is the depiction of the soullessness of wealth and hollow opulence where genuine evil hides behind banal smiles.  Not a single ray of sunshine is seen in the cold bleak settings or in the hearts of the grim characters laboring under the weight of the contents of their own minds. Eli Wallach's brief appearance is memorable, and the stark locales and settings are simultaneously wide open and claustrophobic.  9/10

I watch all kinds of stuff.  I also recently enjoyed the second of the King Naresuan historical epics from Thailand which goes beyond any other historical epic I have seen for vast rampaging spectacle.  I sort of enjoyed Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971), a trippy Italian giallo starring Brazilian actor/director Florinda Bolkan as a woman who appears to have dreamt the stabbing death of her neighbor exactly as it happened.  Didn't really enjoy L'anticristo (1974), an Italian Exorcist rip-off which I had seen before and for some stupid reason watched again, and didn't even make it half way through some damn thing called Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture (1973) also, perhaps more literally, known as Story of a Wild Elder Sister: Widespread Lynch Law.  It is the stupidest and lousiest cheap Japanese exploitation flick I have ever tried to watch.

Movies

Catch Us If You Can (a.k.a. Having a Wild Weekend) - 1965  You'd think the "Dave Clark 5 Movie" would have something to do with the Dave Clark 5, but it doesn't.  This movie brought pleasurable expectations and left only boredom, regret, and a feeling of having been educated rather than entertained.  The one good thing about it for me was that they go to a place that allegedly has go-karts but they don't ride in them, or even show them onscreen.  That was a real relief to me because no matter what song they play in the background a go-kart scene is a go-kart scene and it contributes nothing to the story.  If you like wondering if anything interesting will ever happen, or seeing a movie supposedly about a band in which the band never performs or is even shown with or near their musical instruments, this is for you.  Not me.  2/10 for sociocultural education value, getting to see the Roman baths at Bath, and a lesson learned.

Movies

Genius at Work (1946) stars obscure comedy duo Wally Brown and Alan Carney, and it is a real puzzle how these guys got over half a dozen starring vehicles.  They have no schtick, no outstanding features of any kind except that one of them is not jewish.  Here they are - now you will remember them forever.

This is alleged to be a re-make of the Wheeler and Woolsey movie The Nitwits - I will watch it to find out, and I won't mind because Wheeler and Woolsey can actually be funny sometimes.  Most people don't even know who W&W are nowadays and here are Wally Brown (R) and Alan Carney (L) eating off of their table. Not even enough of a team to be called Brown and Carney.  They are supposed to be a couple of radio announcers who do a crime program and fall afoul of a Master Fiend called The Cobra who baffles the police with his nefariousness.  Studio villain Lionel Atwill is hauled in for that role and Lugosi is reduced to henchman status.  The only really notable thing in the movie is pictured below - Lugosi in spectacles and phony beard, Atwill in granny drag, in a wheelchair, using a poison needle blowgun to commit his shocking murders.  The less said about that the better.  This is a flat factory-made bill-filler cranked out to fill time, not seats, and of no conceivable interest to anyone, not even me.